Dear New York: Can we have your Dept. of Transportation Commissioner? Please?

What sadly passes for a writer at the New York Post calls NYDOT Commissioner Jannette Sadik-Khan a “psycho bike lady” and an “incompetent, overpromoted, overzealous bureaucrat.”

And that’s just the beginning.

This time, it’s because of a plan to convert the city’s 34th Street from a throughway to a Complete Streets busway. Although based on the paper’s highly biased coverage of biking news, it could have been about any number of other issues.

Sadik-Khan is recognized across the country as one of the nation’s leading transportation planners — willing to confront NYC’s addiction to the automobile and return some small portion of the streets to the people who actually live along and use them, rather than the machines that have long destroyed the city’s quality of life.

Yet the Post continues to fan the flames of self-righteousness over any attempt to take a single inch of roadway away from overly entitled motorists in order to actually improve the city’s over burdened streets.

And God forbid that the city’s residents should have viable alternatives to driving. Or pleasant and safer places to live, walk and bike — or just be, for that matter.

But evidently, they couldn’t care less how many people are killed or injured by motor vehicles on New York streets, or how poor the quality of life is along them, as long as they can speed from New Jersey to Long Island without stopping along the way.

Los Angeles has been without a General Manager for our Department of Transportation for the past several months. And we’d like Ms. Sadik-Khan to come home every bit as much as the Post’s writers would like to get rid of her.

So if they can convince New Yorkers it’s better to wallow in their own traffic and smog than actually do anything to improve it, we’ll gladly take her.

Please.

Meanwhile, in an amazing outbreak of enlightened self-interest, Toyota proposes building 250,000 kilometers (roughly 155,000 miles) of Japanese bike lanes in order to ease congestion and reduce the risk of collisions with bikes.

And as it turns out, the secret to happiness could be as simple as commuting by bike.

Here’s a thought: if you feel threatened by cyclists, just turn at the next corner and get away from them. Somehow, watching them bounce off the hood of your car as you drive through several blocks of bikes would seem to weaken that argument just a tad.

Finally, Colorado’s proposed legislation to ban the Blackhawk bike ban failed thanks to the actions of the state’s Republican House Majority Leader; maybe it’s time to point out that cyclists spend a lot of money in her state, which can easily be spent elsewhere.

And a New York legislator proposes hanging a $25 license plate off the back of every bike in the state; and yes, that includes children, evidently. But why stop there? Let’s confront the menace of scofflaw pedestrians by forcing everyone to hang a set of numbers on their ass.

Is it just me or is watching that SUV plow through that group of cyclists akin to watching the World Trade Center crumble? I seriously felt that same sense of tragedy, and that frankly, this is terrorism. Drivers behave like terrorists on the streets. And while there were some people on that Gun Forum who expressed compassion for the people who were hurt, those that laughed and stereotyped all cyclists as “hippy queers” need to be stoned to death. Okay, maybe not stoned to death, but can we at least put them in the stocks and throw tomatos at them?

I have said before that when people (more than we would like to admits) become drivers they also become psychotic maniacs. Most entirely lose their ability to think clearly and with common sense. They place infinite value on their 30 seconds to 2 minutes that they might be forced to slow down for other road users. They don’t care about safe streets; no, they just want fast streets. And 30,000-40,000 senseless deaths a year is a reasonable price (to them) to pay so they can save 30 seconds.

I almost picked up my bike and threw it at an SUV this morning that passed me very closely and going 40 miles per hour (on 4th Street and I was on the sharrows). I caught up with him 10 seconds later at a light. He would rather have hurt me or killed me so he could reach an F***ING red light.

I seriously would prefer the personal automobile to be a thing of the past. I can’t wait for peak oil, and these bozos will be forced to change their ways.